Instrumentalists: Invasion from the Orient

Until recently, the idea of
Orientals performing Western music seemed about as freakish as Heifetz
playing the one-string ichigenkin. Now all that has changed. In the
past few years, American and European concert halls have experienced
something close to a full-scale invasion by talented Korean and
Japanese musicians. Last week, Japan's Seiji Ozawa, 32, conducted
programs of Rossini and Hindemith in Canada; Korean Violinist Young Uck
Kim, 20, performed Saint-Saëns' Concerto No. 3 in Corpus Christi,
Texas; and an eight-year-old Japanese cherub named Hitomi Kasuya
played part of a Mozart violin...